CLASSICAL AMERICAN PRAGMATISM, THE OTHER NATURALISM

This essay compares and contrasts pragmatic naturalism with the more well known position of epistemological naturalism on several pivotal issues, in the process offering a pragmatic critique of the latter. It highlights their common rejection of both foundationalism and a priori methods and their positive claims that: what needs examination is not our concept of knowledge but knowledge itself; knowledge must be understood as tied to the world and as a natural phenomenon to be examined in its natural setting; the epistemic endeavor involves unifying its three traditional projects of giving an account of what knowledge is, explaining how knowledge is possible, and providing useful epistemic advice, thus involving normative considerations; and the method of gaining knowledge in general is continuous with the method of science. Yet, there are very great divergences between the two naturalisms concerning the answers offered, and these are explored and evaluated in the development of the essay. © The Metaphilosophy Foundation and Blackwell Publishers Ltd. 1996.